27.0°

What would happen if there were an oil spill in the Arctic similar to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

"It's going to suck," said Alaskan author and Juneau resident Nick Jans. "There will be a lot of very sad angry helpless people, and a lot of dead polar bears...and the oil's not going to go away very quickly."

Jans organized a panel discussion last Thursday at the University of Alaska Southeast. The panel, made up of various experts involved in environmental organizations, came together to discuss the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its impact on Alaska.

Jans said that oil companies are not prepared to handle a similar crisis in the Arctic. He cited a ConocoPhillips staged drilling exercise that was cancelled on account of dangerous ice conditions.

There is often a "not in my backyard" mentality when talking about industrial development, Jans said, but that future offshore operations planned in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are not simply in the purview of North Slope residents.

"The Arctic is all of our backyards. What happens there is soon to be playing in an ocean near you," he said.

Over the decades, Jans said he has seen the changes as industry continues to grow in Alaska.

"I flew...from Nuiqsut to Barrow two winters ago at night, and it was like flying over Cleveland, and Cleveland went on for a long, long time," he said.

"If I sound like I'm angry...I am, because the arctic was my home, still is," he added, sounding choked up. "The only place, when I get off the plane, people take off their gloves, they stick out their hands, and say, 'Welcome home.'"

Legal requirements don't necessitate a specific geographical scale of analysis on environmental impact, conservation consulting firm president Jim Ayers said, and cited the inclusion of walruses and other marine life not present in the Gulf of Mexico in BP's spill plan.

Ayers headed up the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council charged with designing and executing the restoration plan after the 1989 spill off the coast of Alaska. He focused his attentions on what he saw as being "a default policy in the United States to produce oil at the expense of our environment."

Despite castigating corporate and government responses, Ayers said that the fault didn't stop there.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a devastating tragedy, and we all are responsible," he said. "The current policy of America is designed to produce 20 million barrels a day for us to consume."

Pacific Science Director at the marine conservation organization Oceana Jeffrey Short worked for decades as a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said that there was a fundamental lack of understanding of ecosystems in regions being tapped for oil. He said that little was understood about the ecological areas in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but that it was far from being an "arctic desert."

"The price you pay for having inadequate pre-impact surveys is when it actually does happen, you're crippled in your ability to find out what it actually did," he said.

Pacific Senior Counsel of Policy at Oceana Michael LeVine said there are many sections in OCSLA, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which "are written like a conversation with an oil company."

LeVine said that efforts to begin exploratory drilling in the seas north of Alaska were halted after the Deepwater disaster.

Also in attendance was Fran Ulmer, former Juneau mayor and present chancellor of University of Alaska Anchorage. Ulmer was recently appointed by President Barack Obama as a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The goal of the commission is to explore the options for the prevention and reduction of the impact of future oil spills.

Though she recused herself from speaking during the panel discussion, Ulmer said the conversations taking place awakened the "eternal optimist" in her.

"A crisis is an opportunity to focus the mind, and focus political energy to actually achieve change," she said.

The tone of the audience's Q-and-A session - which lasted longer than the initial presentations by the panelists - was one of frustration.

Former director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Barbara Belknap said she was appalled that the Deepwater spill was credited to a lack of awareness.

"Why on earth would any government let the oil companies drill in sensitive areas out of sight of the public, on the North Slope, off the shore where you don't see them?" Belknap said. "This was not ignorance, this was willful negligence, and it makes me sick to think they're going to get away with it."

Juneau resident Kathie Wasserman said that shifting blame solely onto Big Oil didn't represent what she saw as larger failure on the part of the federal government.

"Three weeks ago I left the bungee cord off of my trash container, and I got a citation," she said. "BP should be slapped big time, but where were all those permitting agencies that are lingering all around the rest of us saying 'This can't go on'?"

Jan Wrentmore, owner of the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, said that she was concerned that the guilty party seemed to be in charge of the relief efforts.

"It's very distressing because on television it appears that BP is calling the shots, and the Coast Guard is doing their bidding," she said.

When the talk ended, everyone made their way towards the parking lot, filled with dozens of gas-powered vehicles packed in neat rows.